


on the backs of the devout

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 05:55:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13496206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Anonymous asked: Rachel refusing to give Kira back at the end of 5x07?





	on the backs of the devout

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: reference to nonconsensual surgery on a child]

The eye whirrs in its socket. No it doesn’t. The eye whirrs in its socket. She can’t actually hear it whirring, but the eye whirrs in its socket. Rachel sits at her desk and drinks another bottle of gin and the eye, the eye, the eye, the eye isn’t whirring in its socket, she can’t hear the eye. The world seesaws around her, nauseous and terrible. Her phone keeps buzzing. Sarah is calling her phone. The eye whirrs in its socket. She wishes Sarah would stop calling her phone, because that buzzing is going to drive her mad. Mad. It’s going to drive her mad, the eye whirrs in its socket.

The bottle of gin is empty. Rachel rests her head on the cold glass of her desk. The eye whirrs in its – she fumbles for her phone and hurls it across the room and the buzzing stops and things are quiet. She wishes she had more gin, except for how she doesn’t.

In the silence she can hear the watch around her neck ticking. She breathes in. She breathes out. Her mind attempts to wind its own machinery back up, fails miserably. She knows that by now the procedure is over; Kira’s eggs are harvested, ready for implantation into Rachel’s line of surrogates. Rachel’s hormone injections. A million and one Rachel-mothers and none of them are actually Rachel at all.

Rachel shoves herself to her feet, sways, considers the animal indignity of vomiting all over her office. Marks it for later consideration – a phrase that seems considerably more funny to her than it should. She’ll put it in a file. In her brain. Next to the one marked CRYING.

She staggers, lurches, stumbles to the elevator. She takes the elevator down. She and Westmorland – John – Rachel and John watch Rachel reflected in the wall. The eye is a clever bit of machinery, she can’t see the circuitry at all. She wonders if he hates it when she blinks. She blinks rapidly; it’s the only spite she has left in her. 

The hallways in the building are empty. They’re all empty. People used to work here but now they are mostly dead, and that is mostly Rachel’s fault. She kills everyone. Poison. Thankfully no matter what she does she’ll always have a piece of Westmorland – John – a piece of Westmorland will always live on, inside of her, because he put it in her head. Smart. Legacy. She can’t hear it whirring in its socket; her feet drag on the ground. She wonders why Sarah isn’t calling her and then she remembers that she broke her phone. She’s tired. Too much gin. Not enough gin. Where is she going? Right, the laboratory. Kira Manning asleep on an operating table. Hello, Kira. Can you hear my eye buzzing? Can you look like me again? Too many people do, and also not enough.

In the operating room Kira is fast asleep on the table. No one else is there. Ghost town. For a moment Rachel thinks she ordered them out of the room and then forgot about it, which seems plausible – then she realizes Westm–John – whatever his name is, he probably cleared the way for her. Considerate of him. There’s even a chair; she sits in it, slumps over and rests her folded arms on the operating table. Rests her cheek on her arms. The friendship bracelet on her wrist is blue. She slits her eyes almost shut and watches it, while Kira breathes.

“You’re lucky,” Rachel tells her. “At least you’re really special. It’s not a lie. No one is lying to you.  _I_ lied, when I said you could go home. But this will be the closest thing you have to home after a while.”

Kira doesn’t answer her. Awful, maudlin. Monologuing to a child. Monologuing to the ghost of a child. Why isn’t Sarah calling her? Because Rachel broke her phone. She wonders where Sarah is. Sarah probably has an answer to whatever is happening here, but she can’t tell Rachel, because Rachel broke her phone. When you swallow gin there is a second where your mind becomes bright sharp stars. Rachel’s head has been a galaxy for hours, on and off, but she can’t drink any more gin or her body will pickle. And then no one will be able to use her for anything, which would be a shame.

There are small hands tugging at the friendship bracelet on her wrist. They can take it. Rachel can’t use it for anything, Rachel’s heart is hollow. All the parts of Rachel are hollowed out and waiting for Westmorland to fill them with circuitry. He should have fixed her leg, too. He should have given her wings. He should have built an automaton and sent Rachel off to the junkyard where she belongs; she’s so tired, she’s so tired, she should be sleeping in a heap of rusted machinery. Those hands tugging on her wrist. “Take it,” she says, “take it,” and she opens her eyes and realizes the hand is her own. She is tugging on the strings on her own wrist. Puppet strings? No, those are everywhere else. She pulls the bracelet off anyways.

“You’re going to be a mother,” she slurs, and clumsily tries to brush the hair out of Kira’s face. Her hands – terrible, broken – fail at the task. Hair sticks. Kira’s eyelashes flutter and she does not wake. “Congratulations,” Rachel says, and realizes that she’s crying. Not enough for the tears to spill from her face; enough that her voice cracks and shatters. 

Well, something has to. 

She keeps petting Kira’s hair. It’s nice. A child not hating her. When Kira is asleep she can’t hate Rachel for anything. It’s almost like being loved. Rachel and Westmorland watch Rachel pet Kira’s hair and one or both of them think about her file, the dolls she played with as a child, the way she cried and cried when Dr. Nealon said she would never raise a daughter. She wonders if he’s also thinking of the part of her file that says she is probably a psychopath. It’s on the third page, because Aldous was terrified people would miss it. He probably saw it. He called her daughter anyways. Isn’t that magical? That someone would love her anyways? Despite the Rachel-ness of her? All she has to do in return is look at things. What a wonderful bargain. She wishes she had more gin. He should have to watch her vomit. He should have to look at it.

“Don’t wake up,” she says to Kira, drunk and clumsy and earnest. “Stay asleep. It’ll hurt when you wake up. Don’t wake up.” She closes her eyes.  _Waking up is always the worst part_ , she wants to say.  _You wake up and your eye is gone. You wake up and you can’t even speak_. But she’s exhausted it: whatever pathetic well of bravery let her say things out loud, it’s empty now. Psychosomatic aphasia. Hands around her throat, pressing down on her vocal cords. She feels hot water trickle down her face, but that’s alright: with her eyes closed, the camera probably doesn’t work. Who could tell?

Where is Sarah? Why didn’t Sarah fix this? Why didn’t she come with another pencil – she could use the other end this time, she could just erase Rachel from the top down. All that would be left would be that eyeball, rolling and sparking and watching the ceiling. Watching the floor. Watching Sarah scoop up Kira from the operating table and hold her, hold her, hold her, hold her in her arms and carry her outside into the world again.

**Author's Note:**

> Go back bodies, didn't I say to stay out?  
> Seems like a lot of you don't know when to shut your mouths
> 
> I know how to live forever  
> It's all on the backs of the devout  
> \--"Culliby," PhemieC
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
